With the development of display technology and social progress, liquid crystal display technology has been more and more widely used and has played an important role in industrial production and daily lives.
Conventional methods for causing a liquid crystal on a liquid crystal display panel to a predetermined tilt angle include a contact-type rubbing orientation method and a non-contact-type photo alignment orientation method. In the rubbing orientation method, a surface of a film to be aligned is rubbed with a flannel roller, so that molecules of the surface of the film to be aligned are arranged in a specific direction by a physical pressure applied. When the film to be aligned is rubbed by the roller, it tends to cause dust particles and electrostatic residues and other undesired friction, affecting the product yield. Therefore, at present, more production lines using the photo alignment orientation method to align the alignment film.
In the photo alignment orientation method, a substrate is irradiated with a polarized light which is obtained by passing an ultraviolet light through a polarizing plate, to align an alignment film and make the surface of the alignment film to have an optical anisotropy. Compared with the rubbing orientation method, the photo alignment orientation method can effectively improve the product yield and the stability of the production equipment. In the photo alignment orientation method, a mask is a carrier for an original pattern of the exposure process, and a tool for transferring the fine pattern, which is used for the mass reproduction of the product and has a key role in the production.
In a traditional production process, one substrate corresponds to one product, while different products correspond to different patterns and require different masks. Later, in order to improve the utilization of the substrate, the mask and the photo alignment equipment, a multi-model group (MMG) technique was developed for simultaneously fabricating a plurality of products on the same substrate. In the existing Multi Model Group (MMG) technology, the same substrate contains a plurality of products with different patterns, which can reduce the number of substrates, but also makes the masks more complex. The cost of the mask is expensive and the accuracy requirement is high, and the cost for designing, manufacturing, shipping, storing, replacing and installation and other processes is high, imposing a greater burden on the designer and the producer. How to reduce the number of masks and reduce the probability of damage has become the key to reduce costs.
It should be noted that, information disclosed in the above background portion is provided only for better understanding of the background of the present disclosure, and thus it may contain information that does not form the prior art known by those skilled in the art.